Sunday, September 02, 2012

Last night's extreme beating calls for an equally extreme healing picture. And boy do I think I found it...

Ed. Note: I made the mistake of doing my initial Google search for a healing pic with the filter set to OFF rather than MODERATE. Uh, there's a reason Google recommends MODERATE. Searching for "Hot Coeds" in the OFF position yields results that, well, are probably only appropriate if we go 0-12 and then bring back Rich Rodriguez.

I'm not really that upset in retrospect. Hoke sat a couple key players for rule violations, something that a lot of coaches who will remain unnamed would not do in this case. We will get better. That is the best team we will see all year. We have a chance to win 11 games. We probably won't win all 11, but we could.

Looking objectively, Hoke has the team on the right track and fans are pumped at recent recruiting successes but the media had this game over hyped when the reality is Michigan is not a top 15 team yet and Alabama remains a top 5 program. There are no shortcuts, it will take a few years and a new QB that fits Hoke's plan. The best thing Hoke can do is to quickly get this train back on the track and write off this savage beat-down.

Yost may have Tweeted it already, but it might be worth looking at Gerd's Michigan Monday if you haven't seen it yet. A little snark but a mostly fair assesment or so says the guy in the scarlet colored glasses.

I'm not sure if Gerd is right on a couple points, though. I think you might have been able to move the ball a bit better if you had all of your regular starters. I'm also not sure how much of the Denard rushing numbers was a lack of planned rushes or Alabama doing a nice job of containing him and not letting him make yards on broken plays which is where many of his yards have come from over the years. Or to be more charitable, I think tuck and run is a checkdown option (somewhere after reciever 1 and before outlet dump to the running back) for him, but Alabama took that away.

I admit I still haven't gotten around to watching the game and haven't had time to drill down into the numbers, or to be honest, I haven't gotten over to MGOBLOG to see Brian's post game breakdown, assuming he does one.

I'm more worried about your defense and Air Force this week than your offense.

"Michigan Monday" is "fair" only as it stands in contrast to the rest of the tsio blogoworld- it's not as completely, insanely biased as the rest. that doesn't make it "fair" in the objective sense.

the only real assessment you can make about Saturday's debacle is that Bama is an outstanding team, and we are not.

the rest of conference played cupcakes Saturday- and half of them struggled w/ the frosting. tsio fans' sense of confidence from crushing a 4-8 MAC school may seem heady, but it'll only last until they start big ten play.

like the MooSU player tweets, these early assessments don't mean anything compared to actual results. the Ozone may enjoy itself now; we'll see what they write on Michigan Monday come 11/26.

Seriously, I said it was mostly fair, but might be snarky and my view of fair might be colored by my OSU bias. I go to mgoblog, BSD and other B1G sites not to talk smack (at least not much,) but to avoid the groupthink that prevails OSU sites. But in our defense, looking at other teams sites, many fanbases have that same kind of groupthink and blind themselves to their warts. So for the M-Zone, I came here for the humor and healing pics and am staying in the hopes Yost some day completes one of his countdowns/coed showdown bits.

I do see now that Yost tweeted it, I sometimes see his tweets in the sidebar on the main page and sometimes I don't.

As for Ohio State, we could have easily been down 14-0 instead of 3-0 at the end of the first. We have the same kind of QB issues you have. I don't think we would have done any better against Alabama than you guys did. I think our defense might done better, but who knows. I think our D got lucky with the Miami's wr drop disease.

I do know it is a long season and OSU fans who think we will beat Michigan because of the results of this weekend are fooling themselves. And if you guys crush Air Force and UCF beats us (which is not outside the realm of possibilities) Michigan fans who assume you will win on 11/24 are just as foolish. Injuries, off the field problems, etc. can radically change a team in a week, especially teams that rely on one or two key players.

I don't think he made it #1 as in a countdown, it was the first in a list of 12, in what seems to be no particular order. Did you read the other entries? And the opening? Did you read his series last year where he compared his picks to guys from CBS the B1G Network and ESPN?

From that same column:

Indiana will start the season 4-0, including a win at Northwestern.

You wanted bold, and I went straight to ludicrous. The rest of these predictions will be read in plaid. Still, Northwestern is famous for early-season losses that should never happen. Also, I have to think that Kevin Wilson is going to put together a decent offense this year. I like the Hoosier backfield and they could cause quite a few problems for the Wildcat defense.

You have to give him props for a Spaceball reference if nothing else.

When it comes to the Michigan prediction you mentioned, so far he is right. You lost to Alabama. You have to play ND at ND and they may finally have their act together in South Bend. Yes, they beat Navy last year big as well, but this year they looked better doing it. The biggest difference is they seem to have more balance on offense. However Denard seems to be your Troy Smith when it comes to ND, so you may win that game.

The inclusion of Purdue is what makes the prediction bold. They are supposed to be better. When he made that prediction before the first snaps of the season I agreed that there was a chance, but I would be suprised if it came to pass. I don't know that Purdue can exploit the flaws in your defense that Alabama did, but it seems somewhat more reasonable than it did a few weeks ago. But that opinion of mine is only with one week of games and as Gerd pointed out in this week's MM, he doesn't think what we saw against Alabama is what we will see offensively from you guys the rest of the season. I really am starting to think Borges decided that the season was more importnant than the Alabama game and elected to protect Denard form getting killed by Alabama's Defense.

I think another reason for the prediction to take shots at Danny Hope who has had the audacity to beat OSU and be smug about it.

Not sure why I feel so strongly about defending Gerd. No, I'm not him or even related. I just think if you looked at it objectively and if he wrote for Michigan you would suddenly think he wasn't such a jackass. I wish you guys had someone who put in the effort breaking down OSU games consistently.

And yes, I agree with Ramona some of the folks in the comments section can be idiots. But look at some of the stuff posted by Michigan fans at mgoblog, and they have some idiotic comments as well. I will admit, and have in the past conceded, we tend to have more idiots.

I have to say, did anyone in their heart of hearts truly believe we were going to actually beat Bama? I would love to say I thought we were going to, but reality, I knew. I just wanted it to be a good game. It is interesting to read and hear not too many were upset or shocked (except those that are ignorant to CFB-like my neighbor that is a HUGE USC honk...that never went there...don't get me started)

Take away the 14 that Denard gave to them and it was not AS bad as the final score looked. I agree with what is being said above, we are not a top 10 school (this year), and Bama is legitimately a top 5. They didn't let LSU past the 50 in the National Championship game last year, and while I know it is not the same team that played this past Saturday, there were many players that were. I do believe the media overhyped this game, making is 'sound' like it should be close in score. If Hoke had another year or two under his belt and we have a consistent QB, it may have been tighter. Denard is good on his feet, and this game he couldn't move, be it the play calling or Bama's D. It is also hard to say, being the first game do we look that bad or did they look that good? We will see in the coming weeks. That said, we shall see how he gets this team fired up for next week, can't let Bama beat us twice.

I read somewhere this game was planned for the 5th year of the RichRod era and was sort of a measuring stick. Unfortunately for you guys, the RichRod era didn't make it to year 5, so Hoke got stuck with it.

I looked back an it looked like it was announce Sept/Oct 2010, at which point my perception was he was already in trouble. So I'm not sure how true that theory is. Granted he started 5-0, but his teams always looked good until the wheels would come flying off in October.

I for one am glad that it was Hoke coaching this game vs RichRod. i NEVER liked R2.

R2 jumped at the chance to coach Arizona because NOBODY was 'knocking at his door' beside (I think) Tulane after not coaching for an entire season. He BARELY beat Toledo in OT in his home opener last weekend. If I remember correctly, he lost to Toledo while coaching at UofM too. I think this would have been a different ball game if Hoke had a few more years under his belt, with more of 'his' players. We shall see though what the rest of this season has in store though...

No, I understood what you were saying :o) I also agree that it is pure speculation as to whether they would have played better, BUT...I feel it would have been worse. RichRod took our defense down to what 106th or something like that???

Yost - The MMQ group actually had nominated Lucy Pinder as a Hot Seat Mascot of the Week! How she didn't win the overall, I will never know but votes for Jenn Brown came pouring in on the final week...

But we may just have to re-run Lucy again! Here she was in week 10 last year...

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